LLH Celebration Part 1: S'mores Ice Cream Sandwiches

Lainee Lou Hou is finally medication free! This is Part 1 of our celebration! We are so thankful for your support and love and prayers!! We wish we could have you all over for a dinner party! We'd have all of my favorite summer time cookout foods; Grilled Pizza, Grilled Romaine, watermelon (Lainee's favorite), and because we don't have a bonfire, we'd have to settle for S'mores Ice Cream Sandwiches!

Is there anyone in the world that doesn't like toasted marshmallows? How could there be?

In middle school, 6th grade to be exact, I was deemed responsible enough to have candles in my room and to light them myself. Oh cool, a mini fire, I thought. I scurried down to the kitchen and stealthily brought up a bag of marshmallows and several toothpicks, I figured a stick would be too obvious. I had my own marshmallow roasting station in my room.

I have moved on from using candles to roast marshmallows, and now use my broiler. The second time I made this recipe, I promised myself I would devote all of my attention to the marshmallows that were sitting under the broiler. So of course, I started doing something else. Then I smelled smoke. I turned around to a raging fire in my oven. What did I do? Stood there and screamed. And then I took moved them to the lower part of the oven and turned the oven off. Sometimes when you burn a marshmallow, you can remove that part and there is still untouched gooeyness inside. Not this time.

Third times a charm! This time I kept my promise, made sure I knew where the fire extinguisher was, and kept my eye on the oven.

That being said, I am really excited to share this recipe with you! I knew this recipe was ready to share because it was the most perfect batch of ice cream I have ever made! It had structure, froze well, and there weren't tiny chunks leftover from accidentally cooking the eggs.

This ice cream is SUPER delicious on its own, but in the name of summer campfires, I wanted something cold/summery/delicious. I was also inspired by Cooking Light's recipe, though I altered it quite a bit, mostly because I couldn't get mine to freeze like ice cream. It was more of a pudding. Still divine though!

You can add chocolate to these however you would like! I tried dipping them into melted chocolate, and just dipping the flat side of a graham cracker square into melted chocolate. I had the most success with the second method, though my tastebuds REALLY like the dipped ones. They were fine, just messy and not the prettiest!

I also tried adding peanut butter. IT WAS SOO DELICIOUS! The only problem was that the peanut butter was homemade, so it was a little bit runny, and I think the coconut oil had something to do with making the graham cracker soggy. You could also forget the chocolate and have them plain. They won't disappoint!

Thank you for being part of our celebration!! Let me know how this recipe works for you by leaving a comment below, or take a photo of your lovely creation, post it on Instagram, tag @corrielanderson and use #itsallofit!

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat broiler. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Paint the parchment paper with the stick of cold unsalted butter so that the marshmallows will come off easily. Pour out 6 cups of mini marshmallows onto the baking sheet and pop into the oven for 1 - 2 minutes. *** DO NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE WHILE THE MARSHMALLOWS ARE IN THE OVEN. THEY CAN CATCH ON FIRE IN SECONDS. *** When marshmallows are nice and toasty brown, take them out and let them cool.

In a medium sized pot over medium heat, add 1 1/2 cup whole milk, 1 cup half and half, 1/4 cup sugar, and a pinch of salt. Stir to dissolve sugar. When mixture starts steaming, take the pot off the heat.

Whisk egg yolks in a medium bowl. Pour a small amount of the milk mixture, about 1/3 cup at a time, into the egg yolks and whisk really well. This gradually warms the eggs up instead of cooking them. Continue until you have poured about half of the contents into the eggs. It is super important to do this in small steps because you don't want to cook the eggs!! Add egg mix back to the pot.

Over medium heat, stir mixture continually and do not let it boil. If you have a thermometer, you can shoot for 170 degrees. It takes about 5 - 7 minutes. Another way you can tell if its custardy enough is to stick a spoon into the mixture, it should stick to the spoon.

Next, pour the milk mixture into a blender. Add the toasted marshmallows. Blend until mixture is super smooth.

While the mixture is in the blender, fill a large bowl with ice and add water. Pour ice cream into 1-gallon freezer safe ziplock (I rinsed mine out and dried it well because it smelled really strongly of plastic!) and submerge it into the ice bath for about 30 minutes, or until it is cold. Then add to the canister of your ice cream maker. When the ice cream is thick and creamy, a bit thicker than soft-serve, scoop into a freezer safe glass container (a larger rectangular container with more surface area is the easiest to work with!) and store it in the back of your freezer. Let it freeze for at least 4 hours, or even better, overnight!

To make ice cream sandwiches, you can do a couple of variations. First, in a microwave safe bowl, melt the finely chopped dark chocolate by putting it in the microwave for 10-15 second increments. Crack the gharams in half, dip each half in the melted chocolate. OR Assemble ice cream sandwiches, and then dip them fully into the chocolate. Place them on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper and then put them back into the freezer until you are ready to eat them! Try smearing peanut butter on each half of the graham crackers for another tasty treat!